


Five Potentials Who Were Never Called

by Baylor



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Glee, Parks and Recreation, The Faculty (1998), The OC, X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 12:07:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10437420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baylor/pseuds/Baylor
Summary: I found a stash of old Buffy and Angel fic while I was clearing out my hard drive that don't seem to have seen the light of day before, so here you go.





	1. Herrington, Ohio

**Author's Note:**

> I found a stash of old Buffy and Angel fic while I was clearing out my hard drive that don't seem to have seen the light of day before, so here you go.

“Seriously?” she asked the British guy who maybe wasn’t actually a perv. She flicked her cigarette butt into the dirt against the brick school wall and ground it in with her boot. “Vampires?”

“Well, what did you think they were?” he asked.

Stokely shrugged. “Crackheads? Football players?” she suggested. “I don’t know why they’re my problem.”

“This is a sacred calling,” he said earnestly. “One girl in all the world to stand between the world and the forces of darkness.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Stokely said, looking not at him but at the football team practicing on the field, the stands beyond with one lonely kid perched on them. “This gig pay?”

“There’s a stipend, living expenses,” he said. 

Stokely lit another cigarette. “And you teach me? No more school?”

He hesitated. “School is your preference, of course,” he said, and now she looked at him.

“I fight these things until one day one of them gets the drop on me and then it’s some other girl with the sacred calling, right?” she said. “That’s how it works?”

He hesitated again, looked her in the eye, and nodded slowly. Stokely dragged on her cigarette. 

“I’m in,” she said.


	2. America

“Fire kills them, right?” she asked, and the Watcher nodded. 

“Fire, sunlight, beheading, stake to the heart,” he said, and she turned from him. 

“I think fire ought to cover it,” she said, and grabbed John’s arm with her bare hand. 

“Ack!” he squawked, and Marie let go, then flung a beautiful fireball right at the vamp. It went up like a torch. 

“That works,” the Watcher said. “Although you don’t need to steal the fire. We’ll get you trained with weapons.”

“Yeah,” John said, shaking his arm. “Because I can kill them that way myself.”

“What if I take a pass?” she asked the Watcher, walking over to toe at the ashy remains of the vampire. 

“Refuse your calling?” he asked. “Well, there can’t be another Slayer called while you still live.”

She gave him a black look. “Subtle, as threats go,” she said. 

“You belong to something here,” the Watcher said. “Going back to before history begins. Something powerful. Something important.”

“You think you’re the first old man to show up telling me I’m powerful and important?” Marie asked. She slipped her gloves back on. “I’ll kill your vampires,” she said, “but I don’t need you. I’m through with secret groups and people who think they know what’s best for me.”

“I know things have been difficult for you,” he began, but she cut him off, walked past him without breaking stride.

“You know what’s good for you, you stay away,” she said, and moments later was gone in the dark night. With a smirk at the Watcher, John followed.

He stared after her for a long time, but she did not return.


	3. Orange County, California

He was waiting in her dorm room when she crawled back in the window, sitting on her bed drinking from a thermos. “Ah, Kaitlin,” he said, and held out the cup. “Tea?”

Her roommate and the dorm matron seemed to be magically asleep, so they walked right out the front door and he drove them to an all-night diner.

“I’m so sorry that it took us so long to find you,” he said politely while she scarfed down fries and a burger. Killing vampires always left her starving. “There was a bit of a mix-up, I’m afraid. We never intend to leave a new Slayer unguided for so long.”

“What was the deal?” she asked around a fry.

“Well,” the Watcher looked down into his coffee cup. “We think it was meant to be someone else. Someone who died in the very moment when she should have been called. And somehow the calling passed on to you, whom we had not identified as a Potential previously.”

“But you had the other girl,” Kaitlin said, and he nodded. She sipped her soda. “Why’d it bounce from her to me when she died?”

The Watcher smiled rather sadly. “These things are hard to say,” he answered. 

Kaitlin looked at him hard, pushed the rest of her food away. “Marissa?” she asked, and he looked startled. “I’m 15, not retarded,” she said.

“Yes, I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“She was the Slayer? Or was supposed to be the Slayer?”

“Yes.”

She nodded. “But now it’s me,” she said, and took a deep breath. “I’d better be a good one then. Make the undead fear the Cooper name.”

Her Watcher stared at her for a long, silent moment, and then smiled, slow and deeply pleased. “I’d like to help you do that,” he said. 

Kaitlin stretched her hand across the table and he took it. They shook on the deal.


	4. Lima, Ohio

She’d always known she was special. She was a star, which was why she liked to put a little gold star sticker after her name. She was Rachel Berry, and she was Chosen.

A Slayer, she decided, was a star so bright there could be only one in the sky, otherwise the brilliance would blind the teeming masses. Even so, they couldn’t look at it too long or they would have those little blobby shapes on their eyelids when they finally blinked.

A Slayer’s life and work should be properly chronicled, preferably as a break-out Broadway production starring, naturally, the Slayer herself. 

“Perhaps it’s wise to gain some experience before composing your own original soundtrack,” her Watcher suggested after hearing “How Can I Be Chosen?” for the first time. “Actually killing your first vampire, for example?”

“You should listen to your Watcher, Rach,” Kurt told her, gazing dreamy-eyed at the tweedy Englishman. “He’s like Rose to your Gypsy.”

Rachel put her hands on her hips, held her chin up high, gaze focused beyond them at the imaginary audience in the auditorium. “I intend to prepare for my life of slaying as vigorously as I have ever prepared for any role,” she told them. “I will be a star among even Slayers, a tale that must be told, a song that must be sung.”

Her Watcher (and wasn’t that great? He was like her own personal audience, following her everywhere) sighed and took off his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Wonderful,” he said. “We’ll need a place to train.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Rachel told him. “My gay dads are turning my in-home dance studio into a dojo.”

“I’m helping with the feng shui,” Kurt said. “We want to make sure the environment fosters learning and discipline while the color scheme brings out Rachel’s features.”

“Oh,” Rachel’s Watcher said faintly. “How delightful.”

“I know, right?” Rachel said, then clapped her hands together. “Now, who wants to hear ‘Stake To The Heart?’”


	5. Pawnee, Indiana

First, it was a bruise on her shoulder. Then, a scratch on her cheek. Finally, an angry welt on her arm, and then Leslie could stay silent no more.

“April, you know you can tell me anything, right? Woman to woman?” she asked, and April glanced up with her level, dead-eye stare.

“Yeah,” she said.

“So you can tell me what’s been going on. Is someone hurting you? Or are you, you know, hurting yourself for some reason? Or is it,” Leslie leaned forward to whisper, “some kind of kinky sex?”

April didn’t blink. “I’ve been killing vampires,” she said.

Leslie put a hand on her arm. “I’m here for you when you’re ready to talk,” she said. 

She went out to the shoeshine station and asked Andy a week later when April showed up with a hunk of hair missing. 

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “She’s been killing vampires a lot lately.”

Leslie stared at him, at the smudge on his nose. It could have been polish, but she thought it was pudding. “OK,” she said. 

She harassed Ron into speaking to April but the next day at work she found him whittling wooden stakes at his desk. She turned around and left without a word.

When April didn’t show up to work or answer her phone, Leslie was nearly ready to call the chief of police and organize a citywide search when April finally dragged in looking somewhat singed. 

“I had a rough night,” she said without inflection after Leslie’s display of concern and outrage. 

“Do not,” Leslie said, holding up a finger, “say anything about vampires.”

“Why not?” April said. “I’m the Slayer. The one girl in all the world who can drive back the darkness.”

“No,” Leslie started, but Jerry interrupted her. 

“Oh, good,” he said. “Pawnee has more vampires than raccoons. We could use the help.”

“Excuse me?” Leslie said, but then a man in a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows and glasses came in.

“Oh, sorry to interrupt, but I found your mobile, April,” he said, and offered out her phone. Leslie was not at all surprised to hear he was British. 

“Thanks,” April said, and stood up to grab it and stuff it in the back of her pants. “See you tonight.”

“I guess to kill vampires,” Leslie snarked, and the man looked at her in exasperation.

“April, really, we’re not supposed to tell anyone,” he said.

April flipped the page of her magazine. “What are you going to do about it?” she said. “I’m the Slayer. You work for me.”

“Oh, well, I,” he stammered, and then said, “Yes, I’ll see you tonight,” and left.

Leslie stared at April. April read her magazine. She finally flipped another page.

“Told you,” she said.


End file.
